


out of the red

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, F/M, Fluff, Redeemed Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 09:58:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11250780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: He walks the around the base with his head held high and with all of the grace and swagger one would expect from his lineage; but the moment he sees Rey turn a corner or walk into a room all of that disappears and he’s once again the awkward twelve year old with too long limbs and a funny looking face.





	out of the red

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know I'm going to hell. Thanks.

A little less than a year has passed since Kylo Ren defected from the First Order and joined the Resistance as Ben Solo and the man is still somehow incapable of carrying a full conversation with Rey Kenobi.

Most of the Resistance is still wary of him. No matter what colors he wears or what name he calls himself, he is still the man who murdered their loved ones, he’s still the man who tried to stab his father through the heart and left him for dead on a collapsing planet. They accept his presence because they know his knowledge and power will further their cause, because Han Solo welcomed him back with open arms, but mostly because General Leia Organa is still a far more fearsome creature than just about anyone else in the galaxy. Those who believe he has turned back towards the light are intimidated by him; he is towers over almost everyone, he is a powerful force-user, and he is the General’s son. He walks the corridors of the base with his head held high and with all of the grace and swagger one would expect from his lineage; but the moment he sees Rey turn a corner or walk into a room all of that disappears and he’s once again the awkward twelve year old with too long limbs and a funny looking face.

It’s frustrating and makes him miss his mask. It was an ugly thing, a hassle to put on and it gave him all different kinds of headaches, but at least he could hide behind it. When he wore his mask no one could know what he was thinking or feeling unless he wanted them to. Now, his emotions are on full display and everyone can see how red his ears get when Rey catches him staring at her because he still sometimes forgets that his face is bare.

“You really gotta stop starin’ at her, son. It’s creepy and it’s weird,” Han tells him one evening before dinner. Luke and Chewie both nod in agreement as Threepio sets the table and tells them that Leia is on her way.

“I know that, Dad, but I don’t really realize that I’m doing it,” Ben groans. “I just wish I could find a way to be in the same room as her without embarrassing myself.”

“But you don’t embarrass yourself when you two are training?”

“No, we don’t talk during training. There’s no need to talk, we just…are.”

Ben is relieved when his father doesn’t ask him to explain what that means. He always had a difficult time explaining the Force to him, and Han always had a hard time hearing about it; but they’ve both gotten better at it. A little better, anyways.

Luke studies Ben for a moment. “Did you ever embarrass yourself when you two dueled?” Ben shakes his head and Luke eyes the scar on his face. “Not even on Starkiller?”

“No, I deserved that one. The rest of the time I was too focused on turning her to the Dark Side and not getting killed.”

Chewie lands a heavy paw on his nephew’s shoulders and gently growls, “Is this about those dirty dreams you used to send her?”

“ _WHAT?!_ ” Both Luke and his father roll their eyes. Chewie laughs. “I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE – I _never_ – WHAT? – _WHO SAID?”_

Han runs his hand across his face. “It was Rey, Ben. Rey told Finn and Poe. Poe went to your mother and, eventually, your mother told us.”

“Well, she told Luke and your father,” Chewie yips. “I just overheard.”

“ _Finn and Poe know?!_ ”

Luke nods. “I think she had a thing with one of them. Or both of them. I don’t know. I don’t want to know.” He looks at his robotic hand and flexes it. “Is it about the dreams, though?”

Ben all but glares at his uncle. Both of them. “No, I already apologized to her about that. I just… I just want to be able to _talk_ to her but she’s just so kriffing terrifying.”

Chewie gently starts to rub Ben’s back the way he used when he was a little boy. “All the best women are,” he rumbles as Han and Luke nod in agreement. “Why don’t you give her flowers? When a Wookie wants to court a potential mate he fashions jewelry out of flowers and plants. Rey loves flowers and green things.”

Han slaps his thigh. “Great idea, Chewie!”

“Yeah!” Luke adds, “There’s a cluster of some really nice ones not far from the base, I’m pretty sure it’s within your ankle bracelet’s range. We can meditate outside and afterwards I’ll help you pick some out.”

And that’s exactly what they do. After meditations Luke helps him pick a few handfuls of some very pretty blue and purple flowers and Chewie helps him make them into a necklace and a crown. It’s a busy afternoon, but it’s also the most peaceful one Ben has had in a very long time, taking him back to before he was swallowed in darkness, back to when he was just a little boy climbing trees and being carried by his favorite furry uncle.

They manage to sneak Rey’s gifts into her room while she’s eating dinner in the mess and, before Chewie turns to leave, Ben pulls as much of the Wookie into his arms as he can manage.

“Thanks, Uncle Chewie, for everything.” He doesn’t complain when Chewbacca ruffles his hair.

Ben hides behind a small stack of crates and spare droid parts and waits a solid hour before Rey finally strolls down the corridor humming a nonsensical melody through a small smile.

The smile only grows when she walk into her small quarters and spots her tokens. She gently takes them into her hands, almost afraid to damage the delicate petals. She inspects both pieces carefully before hanging the longer one around her neck and placing the other on her head with a happy giggle.

And then she sneezes.

And keeps sneezing.

After about two minutes of almost nonstop sneezing her eyes are watery and as red as the skin on her hands and around her neck.

Rey throws the flowers onto the floor and glares at them, as if the flowers themselves have conspired to betray her, before stomping out the door and towards the med bay.

Ben does not move from his post until he’s sure she’s gone and then books it back to the Falcon. Later, Luke tells him that Rey had stormed the med bay declaring that someone had tried to poison her and that it had taken Leia and the medics quite some time to convince her that she had simply suffered an allergic reaction.

“She thinks I tried to _poison_ her?” Ben almost whines, sulking his way to the Dejarik table and covering his head with his long arms.

Luke marvels at how much of his nephew actually hasn’t changed from the melodramatic teenager he once was.

“Well, to be fair, Ben, she actually doesn’t know it was you who gave her those flowers so…”

“I still almost killed her. Again.”

Luke rolls his eyes. “No, you didn’t. She got a runny nose and a rash. They gave her some medicine and a cream. She’ll be back to her usual sunshiny self by morning.”

Ben huffs from inside his little cocoon and Luke starts to feel a slight sense of desperation grow in his gut. He, Leia, and Han agreed that keeping Ben busy and out of his own head as much as possible was paramount to keeping him as close to the light as possible. They had neglected him as a child; not physically, but emotionally they weren’t there as much as they should have been, and those empty spaces they left in his mind allowed Snoke’s influence to grow and grow until the darkness filled up nearly every corner of the boy’s mind.

He needs to get Ben’s mind off of accidentally hurting Rey.

“Why don’t we make her an apology/I like you cupcake?” he offers. “I made one once for your mom, you know, back before I knew she was my sister. She loved it so much she went out with me.” Ben glares at him through a gap in his arms. Luke clears his throat. “Nothing happened, thank the Force; but the point is, she gave me a chance.”

Ben slowly raises his head and cautiously studies his uncle.

“What kind of cupcake?”

They very quietly, and very secretly, raid the kitchens for ingredients the next morning and decide to make a red berry filled cupcake. It takes them the better part of the morning to bake just one. It comes out slightly lopsided and yellower than expected, but Ben is proud of the green frosting heart he painstakingly draws on the top of it and Luke is proud of Ben.

That afternoon they discreetly take spots behind a half-open door and watch Artoo deliver the little cake to Rey just as she’s climbing out of a half-shot out U-wing, her hair a mess and her face adorably stained with grease and sweat.

“It’s from a friend,” he beeps.

She squints at him. “The same friend that gave me those flowers last night?”

Artoo bounces excitedly from leg to leg. “He wants to apologize.”

Rey considers Artoo, who she knows has been Master Luke’s loyal companion since before she was born, and the sad little cupcake that will surely fall to the dirty hanger floor if Artoo doesn’t stop bouncing soon.

“Well, it would be a shame to waste such a nice treat.”

Ben holds his breath when she finally picks up the funny looking pastry his heart is apparently hinging on. She smiles sweetly at Artoo before she bites into it, and then immediately spits it out, the berry filling staining her mouth with a horrifying blood red color.

Actually, it looks a lot like blood.

Maybe too much like blood.

Finn and Poe are at her side immediately – Finn wiping her face with the cleanest rag he has on hand, Poe studying the cupcake’s remains with a detective’s eye. Artoo rolls away from the scene at an alarming speed and Luke follows, leaving Ben alone, trapped behind the door by his increasingly overwhelming sense of shock and embarrassment.

“I told you! I told you, someone is trying to poison me!”

Finn shakes his head and strokes her hair. “No one is trying to poison you, Rey.”

“It tastes like bantha shit and rancor backwash and _looks_ like _blood_ ,” she growls.

“That’s because they used the wrong berries,” Poe explains. “The filling is made from barbroberries. You’re supposed to cook them or else they taste bad.” He drops a kiss on her temple and rubs her back. “Come on, let’s go get you some water.”

Poe leads Rey out of the hanger. Finn trails behind them, finding Ben’s gaze from across the busy hanger and meeting it with a deadly stare of his own.

Luckily, the cupcake incident gets Leia involved.

Ben thinks ‘luckily’ because it’s Luke who gets in trouble and not him.

“Why, Luke? Why did you think that _baking_ was a good idea? **_Baking?_** ” She questions, pacing the living room like a caged dire-cat. “Luke Skywalker, you are great at many things but, rest assured, baking is most definitely _not_ one of them.”

Luke sputters while Han laughs. “B-But what about that cupcake I made for you that one time. The pink one with the cream filling. You ate the whole thing.”

Leia stops pacing and stares at her brother. “I was being polite. Your cupcake tasted like bantha shit, too.”

“B-B-But you went out with me, like, immediately afterwards!”

“It was a pity date, Luke.” She shakes her head. “It wasn’t even much of a date. We went for a walk and I let you hold my hand.” She turns to her son and gently says, “Ben, you need to spend time with Rey’s friends. She needs to get to know you as the man you are now and, honestly, her friends don’t really trust you. Finn thinks you’re trying to hurt her somehow.”

“They would never give me a chance, Mom. They don’t like me. No one does. Even that little orange ball hates me!”

“Don’t worry, baby, I’ll take care of it.”

“But Mom –“

“You know,” Han interrupts, “if her friends come around, then maybe Rey will, too.”

“What are you going to do, set up another playdate?” Ben grumbles.

And that’s what Leia does. Sort of.

Poe and Finn show up for lunch in his quarters the next day. They’re clearly there on direct orders from the general, but Ben still tries his best to be a gracious host just like his mother taught him to be as a boy.

Poe is the friendlier of the two, smiling kindly and starting painful small talk as he picks at his food. Ben pretty sure his demeanor has mostly to do with the pilot’s overwhelming need to please the General.

Finn in no way feels compelled to please Leia and, thankfully, cuts right to it.

“What do you want with Rey?”

The ex-stormtrooper is kind of starting to grow on him a little.

“I want to be with her. I want a chance to be with her.”

“Why?”

Ben shrugs, as if the answer is obvious. “Because she’s smart and brave and strong. I’m sure she’s just as strong as my mom, and not just in the Force. And she’s just so nice and pretty. She’s probably the only woman in the whole galaxy who can kick my ass.” He shrugs again and smiles a half dreamy smile. “Rey is just wonderful.”

Finn doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he just silently stares at a spot behind Ben’s head and considers how the man who once sliced his back open could also be an overgrown lovesick puppy.

“Why don’t you try just being her friend as a start?” Poe asks over a cup of juice.

Ben shakes his head. “Every time I try to talk to her I either trip over my own foot or she runs away. One time she actually jumped over Threepio to get away from me. I’ve been tempted to give up on it ever happening, but then I’ll catch her defending me to that droid of yours.” He pokes at his sandwich and a corner of his mouth twitches upwards. “Sometimes I catch her looking while I do my forms.”

Finn purses his lips, almost afraid to ask, “Looking?” Ben vaguely gestures to his chesticular/abdominal area. “Oh,” he says quietly and then sighs in what seems to be resignation, nodding his head in Ben’s general direction. “I heard her tell Rose about… _that_ and how, um, distracting that can be. For her, I mean.”

“And you’re right,” Poe adds. “She does defend you, and not just to BB-8.” He and Finn share a look and nod. “Okay, Ben, we’ll put in a few good words with Rey. You know, talk you up a little. Although, it’d help if you actually had a meal or two in the mess with us. You wouldn’t even have to say anything.”

Ben nods. “Tomorrow. Lunch.”

They spend the rest of their meal in surprisingly easy conversation. Well, maybe not _easy_ , but certainly easier than expected. They compare First Order and Resistance bunks and meals, and Poe and Finn clue Ben in on the base’s gossip, which he doesn’t totally grasp because he really doesn’t spend time with anyone except his family.

Before they walk out the door, Finn turns to Ben and asks a question that has been eating away at him for months.

“Rey. Is she the reason why you turned back to the light? Do you think she saved you?”

Ben shakes his head and chooses his words very carefully. “I didn’t turn back to the light, at least not completely. I will always carry the Dark Side with me, it’s a part of me. The truth is, no one can save me but me.” He shrugs and he smiles a little smile, Han’s smile. “Rey makes the fight against the dark a little easier.”

Finn and Poe look at him and Ben feels something within the both of them shift.

*

The boys keep their promise. That night they meet Rey for dinner in the mess and, halfway through their meals, sacrifice their pudding cups to their cause because a Rey with stuffed stomach is a Rey that is not likely to run.

Poe is the first to broach the subject.

“Did we tell you we had lunch with Ben Solo today?” She shakes her head, her mouth full of some bread of some kind. “The General asked us to go eat with him in his quarters.”

She cocks her head to the side. “Why?”

“Because the General thinks he needs to… No, you know what? No. We talked about you, Rey. The General sent us there to talk about you.”

“What? Why?”

“Oh please, you know why,” Finn huffs. “Ben Solo is in love with you. Like, head over heels, cupcake baking, flower crown making, already naming your babies in love with you.”

She slowly chews what’s left of her grilled meat substitute and stares at an empty spot on the table.

“Rey, you had to have known it was him,” Poe says, his voice soft and tender and friendly as always. She shrugs, her gaze moving from the table to her cup of water. “Do you think that, maybe, you might have similar feelings for him, too?”

Now she’s staring at her napkin and biting her lip.

Finn tiredly runs his hand across his face, still not quite believing he’s actually going to say the words that are about to come out of his mouth. “Listen, you’ve got to tell him if you don’t feel the same way. Okay? You’ve got to put him out of his misery, Rey. I mean, hell, I’m even starting to feel sorry for the guy.”

She still says nothing. She stares at their plates, at the ceiling, at her hands, anywhere but them. The boys say nothing as she avoids their gaze, letting her mull on their words. They remain silent even when she gathers all three pudding cups into her arms and wordlessly walks away.  

Poe looks at her tray and picks up her unused spoon. “Do you think she uses Force to feed herself pudding?”

*

The next day Ben is walking across the hanger bay on his way out to the Falcon when he sees Rey perched on the backend of Snap’s X-Wing with a data pad in her hand. His heart starts working double time when she catches his gaze. She raises her hand, gives him a tiny wave along with a tiny smile, and before he can wave back he trips over a certain white and orange droid that continues to roll away as if it hadn’t just bowled over one of the most powerful creatures in the galaxy.

When Ben looks back at Rey she is gone.

*

“So, how are things going with Rey?” Han asks after putting the Falcon into hyperspace.

It’s Ben’s first trip off planet since defecting from the First Order, a simple mission to the Outer Rim that will likely end in up being more complicated than necessary because that is their lot in life; but it’s quality time with his son and he’s going to make the most of it.

“She waved at me yesterday,” Ben says. He looks pleased.

“She _waved_ at you?”

Ben nods almost happily. “Yep. From across the hanger bay.”

“And did you wave back?”

Ben shakes his head. “I tripped over Poe Dameron’s stupid little droid.” He frowns a contemplative sort of frown. “I think that thing has it out for me.”

Han laughs.

Once upon a time Ben would have growled at the sound, raged at his father for laughing at his plight; but now he can see that there is no antipathy in his laughter and no fear in his eyes, all Ben sees and hears is unbridled love and affection and for a moment wonders how he could have possibly been blind to something so luminous.

“You know, Ben, flowers and sweets are nice and all, but what a woman _really_ wants is heart. If you’re not going to go ahead and actually tell her how you feel, if you’re going to let your actions speak for you, then you’ve got to give her something that means something.”

“Something that means something?”

“Yeah, something meaningful.” Han’s smile takes a nostalgic turn. “You know how you’re mom wouldn’t give me the light of day way back when? Well, I gave her a bottle of Alderaanian wine for her first birthday after the Death Star. Sure she kept calling me names and insulting my, well, everything; but she started spending a hell of a lot more time with me after that.”

Ben bites his lip and studies a spot on the Falcon’s console.

“Dad, do you think we could make a stop on Jakku?”

*

The doll is the last thing Rey expects to see when she walks into her quarters. It looks exactly the same as it did when she last saw it on Jakku, just as stiff and just as sandy. She brings it up to her chest and hugs it close, only now coming to realize just how much she actually missed the silly little thing.

She takes it with her down the hall and around a series of corners, clutching it tightly to her chest next to her wildly beating heart.

Ben’s heart is beating just as fast, maybe even faster, and Rey swears she can hear it as clearly as her own when he opens his door to her. She thinks she hears it stop for a beat when she grabs his shirt pulls his face down low enough for her to drop a kiss on his scarred cheek.

 “I thought I’d lost him for good. Thank you for giving him back to me.” She sways a little in his doorway, a bundle of nervous, happy energy personified. “I didn’t know Jakku was part of the mission’s plan.”

“It wasn’t.”

Now, she’s swaying and beaming and he’s smiling in a way she’s only ever seen in her dreams. 

“Do you want to go to the mess and get some dinner with me?” she asks, her voice sounding much too girlish to her own ears. She clears her throat and squares her shoulders, but she can’t stop swaying. “We could talk about, you know, the…stuff. The things we need to talk about. You know, the accidental poisoning and the running. And, I promise I won’t steal your pudding.”

He rolls his eyes, his crooked smile still firmly in place. “I didn’t accidentally poison you. You had an allergic reaction. Those flowers grow all over this planet, you would have had the reaction eventually. The cupcake wasn’t poisonous either, by the way, it just tasted bad.” He turns off his lights and closes his door behind him. “And you can have my pudding, I never eat it anyways.”

Walking out of the barracks, Rey takes his hand, silently weaving her fingers through his, and Ben almost stumbles over his own foot.

 _Almost_.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I might do one from BB-8's pov. I don't know yet.


End file.
